


you should not be your own enemy

by beechee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Introspection, Marvel Universe, Multi, POV Multiple, POV Second Person, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beechee/pseuds/beechee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of post Winter Soldier drabbles, in no particular order. Any content warnings mentioned at the start of each chapter, currently being reworked into a single cohesive story!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5:57 AM, Tuesday

At 5:57 AM on a Tuesday, you slip out of the apartment via a window on the second floor. You know that it’s been left openable in case you need to do just this, in case the _people_ get too much, Sam’s raspy breathing and Steve’s quiet footfalls, Natasha’s sparkling laugh that comes more and more frequently as days pass all crowd down in on you and beat their way through the fragile membrane of your skull, through the precarious _you_ to the rock solid _not-you_ that lurks below it.

You don’t particularly need this right now, could easily handle another ten, fifteen days without so much as a twitch, but Sam and Steve and Natasha are one and all working on teaching you that you are allowed to rectify situations that are bothering you before they would impede your functionality. Are working on teaching you to recognize what bothered feels like, what distaste is and how to air it. So you slip out of the flat via the second floor window that is high enough off the ground that Steve and Sam and Natasha can pretend that they simply didn’t think it a security risk and you can pretend to believe them if anyone asks and your boots hit the ground with a dull thud.

You remembered your boots this time.

You’ve made a point of remembering your boots ever since you landed on a beer bottle, as much because you know your functionality must be safeguarded as because it upsets Steve and Sam and Natasha.

You didn’t remember your jacket, but it’s not too cold, and you have long sleeves on anyway, and with your metal hand curled into a fist you find (startlingly still, even after all this time) that you do not _want_ your arm obscured. It is yours, _yours,_ and you will not let that be ignored, you don’t think. Or you won’t, unless someone mentions it.

It’s easy to muster determination in the face of hypotheticals, but when Steve or Sam or Natasha or (anyone, anyone, _anyone_ ) someone else speaks with that air of command you still find yourself twitching to before you’ve even had the chance to process their words.

(Steve and Sam are bad at hiding their regret, their disappointment their angersadness _guilt_ whenever this happens. Natasha is better, but you do not think it is because it bothers her any less. You think instead it is simply because she is better at hiding, period. She is accustomed to subterfuge. So, once, were you. Now though, now you twitch away from lies when you're put to question, bite back heavy honesty on a bitter tongue because once what made you James Buchanan Barnes was stolen from you, and now what made the new you you has also been taken; it’s not fair to blame Steve or Sam or Natasha but sometimes you think you do anyway. You learned early on that you are not, were not, will never be a good person. You’ll live. It’s what you do.)

Minutes have passed while you’ve been lost chasing your thoughts, and your lips thin out into a firm line at the realization. You twitch your hood up around your ears and head towards the street, falling into an easy and powerful saunter that makes people get out of your way instinctively. You’d asked Steve if that should bother you, the way a path is _always_ clear for you, and he’d looked at you for a long moment before Sam had told you not to look a gift horse in the mouth and you’d forced yourself to turn away, to pretend you’d not seen the thinning of his lips as he struggled with which answer to present you with.

You’d had enough of people trying to figure out how best to _handle_ you to last you a lifetime. English is a stranger on your tongue, your mother tongue a tourist in your mouth, but you remember well enough what resentment tastes like, and it tastes like _this_.

The streets fall away in front of your feet, and it’s clear enough that you don’t have to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze on your way to the run-down park you’ve made your haunt for the past six months. Your bench is clear of everything saving a light frost, and with your breath puffing into clouds about your lips you decide you do not mind the cool and sit without hesitation. The cat who lives under the bushes sixteen feet to the left of you is curled up there, waiting for the sun to warm the day before she sets about it, though the squirrels rushing through the trees have no such compunctions about the cold.

You lean your head back, tilt your eyes closed, and allow yourself to fall into the closest thing to a doze that you can manage in a public place. It is somehow more restful even than the sleep you can sometimes achieve in the comfortable bed in the spacious room that you have been allocated. For a while, your mind can simply float.

In a few hours, Steve or Sam or Natasha or some combination thereof will come and find you, because they still don’t like you to be on your own, or because you are dangerous, or because the world is dangerous, or perhaps because they are dangerous and only less so with you around; you’ve not yet worked out their motivations to your satisfaction - but the fact remains: they will be here. The fact remains, they will be here.

For now, though, it’s just you. Just you and the cat and the squirrels and the few birds who have yet to migrate south for more hospitable climates out of some defunct preservation instinct; with the wind blowing the faint city-smell into your nose and the skittering of animals the only things your ears can hear over the incessant ringing, you are as close as you can come to at peace.


	2. all the tales of a past life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You’d always had a soft spot for his habit of raising hell, you’d even encouraged it- you wouldn’t've if you’d known that one day hell would raise him back"
> 
> Or: Steve ruminates on this weird combination of The Winter Soldier and his oldest friend. Introspection's his strong suit, after all. Only second to self-recrimination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve's mind is not a happy place to be, but I don't think this chapter needs any warnings. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Now that you know what it looks like, you think he's always moved with the chance of violence. He's always been sinuous and easy and _angry,_ so angry, the centre of any room he stepped into. He demands attention with either his charisma or his danger and does not much care which draws people in, uses the way his stride bounces even while his fists clench without a thought and always has, but this, this is something new. This is an easy mixture of charm and danger and you hate yourself a little for the way your mouth dries up when you watch him move. _That,_ at least, is nothing new. You've hated yourself for a lot over the years. You're used to it.

It was like that-  _he_  was like that when you marched back together from the hydra base you rescued him from. Had that swing in his step that he'd put on every time he saw there were people with which you were rendezvousing, a jaunty set to his shoulders that you know is not at all heartfelt. he's not the sort to let others catch sign of his weakness- that has ever only been you, always you (though you do not know if he is even aware of  it), and you know the price at which that privilege is bought. It might have broken your heart to see him forcing the spring in his step, but you do not actually realize just what it’s composed of until you’ve seen this modern version of it, don’t recognize proprietary readiness as anything but _the_   _norm_  in the way his thumb strokes along the side of his gun until you see him with a grenade launcher in hand and icy decades of God only knows what in his heart. You know you're right though, you know it was like this even when you marched into the depths of hell to drag him back.

(You’d always had a soft spot for his habit of raising hell; you’d even encouraged it- you wouldn’t’ve if you’d known that one day hell would raise him back.)

You think it might always have been like that- you think maybe he hasn't changed so much as what he let you see has. Taking care of you has always been his priority, after all, and that meant ( _means_ ) lying to you about things- about how much food his family had, about where he’d gotten work, about how easily the two of you could manage on your own after your mom and his dad both died. This is just one more thing, and it belongs to a pattern you should have sniffed out decades ago.

But you're pretending that this isn’t about you, it’s about him, about the way you can’t exist the one without the other and some days you think that he regrets it even more than you do. It’s about the way he lets Natasha run her fingers through his hair while he pretends not to cry and the intensity with which you know he feels, about—

—fuck, you don’t know what it’s about, other than the fact that you look at him and you either want to cry, scream, punch something until your hands wear away to nubs, or curl up next to him and sleep for another sixty years, until you finally feel rested, until the ghosts behind his eyes and behind yours have given up and gone home, until the two of you can laugh easy again and jostle shoulders without worrying about bruises, tease without caution and simply  _be._  And maybe it’s about how only the last is new—the rest have been your constant companions since you woke up with everything you knew aged into ash.

Maybe it’s about what’s left, after the ash is cleared away. Maybe it's about the chance of winter sun, pale and weak but brighter than anything you've seen since you opened your eyes after seventy years on ice.

Maybe it's about your evolution, maybe it's about his. 

After all, a brave new world needs brave new men.


	3. sunshine or seafoam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I ain't useful to you like this." And that is the crux of the problem, isn't it. You don't know who you are outside of Steve Rogers, and inside of Steve Rogers you have always been the first, second and final line of defence.
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes has an uncomfortable conversation with a sleeping Steve Rogers. 
> 
> Content Warning for suicidal ideation.

You wait until you are certain he is fast asleep to begin your confession. Words fall past your lips, bit by broken bit, nearly inaudible.

"I can't handle it, you know." You bite back a laugh, let your lips twist up into a maybe-smile instead. "God, Steve, I can't handle  _shit_." You glance up at him, because at some point your eyes fell to where your fingers twist metal and flesh in your lap and you want to be  _looking_  at him if you're going to tell him this, even if he's asleep.

"I could manage when it was just  _you_ , when my job was just dragging your scrawny ass around and having a knack for finding the right alleyway for kicking the shit outta people trying to do the same to you, but this?" Your voice is barely even a whisper, mostly for fear of waking him. He doesn't sleep much. You don't like it. Still, there are some conversations too important to risk having with him awake. 

"The shit I've done, the shit I've gotta  _live with_ , Rogers, it'd turn your hair gray." You find yourself wanting to reach out, wanting to touch- to prove that he's here, prove that he's  _real_ , prove that whatever sorry excuse for your conscience is left to you didn't just dredge him up from the depths of your lobotomised brain. You twist your fingers further together still; your arm  _creaks_ , and you freeze for a moment, but Steve doesn't seem to be waking just yet, you seem to still be safe. The soft sound of abused machinery has become common enough that it no longer disturbs him. You don't know how to feel about this, so you decide not to.

"And I mean, I guess I wouldn't mind it," Lie, a dirty fucking lie, only you'll tell yourself what you need to when Steve can't hear because as much as you want to die you don't want to  _die_ , not when you're still needed. Not when there's still some use that can be wrung from you. "I mean, I said until the end of the line, and I don't scare easy enough for an extra century or two to send me running, but." There's a soft popping sound. You shove your pinky back into its socket without even glancing down, lower your voice even further. This is melodrama of the highest order, you hate yourself for every word. You couldn't stop with a gun pressed to your temple. You couldn't stop even with the lightning machine clamped around your head, would scream this out with your last seconds of awareness if you had to. Your self-loathing only increases.

"I ain't useful to you like this." And  _that_  is the crux of the problem, isn't it. You don't know who you are outside of Steve Rogers, and inside of Steve Rogers you have always been the first, second and final line of defence. Anything that's tried to come at him has had to come through you first, everything you have had has been to protect him. Fists, tongue, rifle- any defence you could muster you have mustered, and now your finely tuned radar is reading  _you_  as the largest threat to his continued well being.

After all, you still wake up not knowing what you are some nights. Sill wake up not knowing why, or how, or anything more than  _this is how you break the neck, this is how you hide the body_.

It's only Stark and Erskine who're keeping him alive in face of your confusion, and you don't know how long you can put your trust in dead men. 

His steady breathing hasn't so much as faltered in the entire time you've been talking, and as your lips thin out to bloodless lines in face of your own inability to make the right decision, he sighs in his sleep, rolls closer to the edge of the bed closest to you. 

You fight the urge to recoil like he's a fire. You fight the urge to lean in like he's the sun. 

You remember brutally, suddenly, laying on the frozen-solid ground of Germany with the commandos all around you, your head cushioned by your pack as Steve tells and retells every myth he can recall. He's not as good with words as he is with pictures, but then your Steve's pictures were-- something else, and his words not matching up hardly makes them inadequate for the task to which he plies them. Falsworth is on watch and Dum Dum's asked to hear about Daedalus, only Steve's gotten sidetracked by Icarus the way he always,  _always_  does. Laying on the ground with rocks prodding you in the back and the ass and the legs and the neck, you're not exactly comfortable, but your mind has drifted far enough that when you turn your head to catch a glimpse of Steve it doesn't even startle you to think that the sun has nothing on Steve, can't even hold a candle to him.

The memory lets you go about as gently as it took you and you choke on your next breath, and  _that_  gets Steve up, gets him reaching for his shield even as he gasps "Buck?" and fights his way to awareness through sleepy confusion. 

You force a slightly more natural expression than the emptiness that you'd been wearing, neutrality the best you can throw together in such short order. "Nothing. Go back to sleep." 

You don't wait for him to respond in either the negative or the affirmative, simply drag yourself into a prone position on your bed and close your eyes.

Neither of you will be getting much sleep, but if you pretend otherwise Steve will leave you alone until first light. And you need more time to think.

God help you, you need more time to think.


	4. rooftops and you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is how you tell time, with the word and."
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes, talking, and rooftops. 
> 
> Content warning for unreality and depersonalization, though the second is minimal.

He does a lot of talking.

And when you say that he does a lot of talking, you mean even compared to the others. Before you’d known people outside of your handlers as more than just potential targets and things to be eliminated, you’d thought that Pierce had talked a lot. He’d certainly spoken more than any of the others who’d come and gone, or—

—or you think so, at least.

You’re kinda foggy on that. Pierce had (has?) (will have?) (words won't line up properly for you about him, no matter how you struggle) nothing on him, though.

That’s not the point, though, the point is that Widow looks at him with a little crease between her eyebrows, that Falcon’s lips press thin when he’s been telling you stories all day, and you know what that means, you think.

It means disappointment; it means failure; it means pain. Or in this time and this place, it means disapproval; worry; warmth.

You don’t know what warmth means, beyond a dictionary definition.

You do know what cold means!

Cold means winter.

Winter means you.

Which in turn means that you don’t shiver when it’s November and Steve has found you on the rooftop, when it’s November and you have yet to find yourself on the rooftop so it stands to reason that there is no _you_ to find. He finds you on the rooftop and you think  _that shouldn't surprise me,_  and you think  _when did I become a **me**_ , and he rests a hyper-heated hand on your shoulder and none of that seems to matter, and you smile up at him.

There is no you to find on the rooftop, so let’s say he does- not because you want to indulge in fantasy, but because if you’re going to imagine a reality you may as well imagine one as true as you know how, and what you know above all else is this: no matter when, no matter where, Steve Rogers will find Bucky Barnes.

No matter when, no matter where, Steve Rogers will find Bucky Barnes, and you bear a close enough resemblance that he will find you, always.

There is no you to find on the rooftop, so let’s say it’s actually December- let’s say it’s midnight, or eleven fifty three, which is close enough, let’s say it’s snowed and let’s say the snow has drifted slowly down to cover you in a fine dusting, let’s say, (for just one miserable moment while we are wildly imagining a reality where in eleven months Steve Rogers will find you on another rooftop, and when he does you will smile at him as though you were born and not made) let’s say that you see him coming and you don’t get out of the way.

This will be how you tell time, with the word _and._


	5. your head in the curtains (and heart like the fourth of july)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What this is getting around to saying, is that by the time your third June rolls around you can trace the letters of the month that follow on the bedroom ceiling: the big J, the hasty u that loops up into the l and meets the finalizing y that put together mean it’s Steve’s birthday soon."
> 
> Or: for once, Bucky Barnes kind of has his shit together in time for Steve Rogers' birthday. 
> 
> Content warnings for: unreality, accidental self-harm, allusions to suicidal behaviour. Note: I totally wish Natasha could be involved in this chapter, and she will for sure be involved in the future, but the dynamic just didn't gel for this fic, sorry guys.

Some days are better than other days. This is only intuitive, of course- recovery is circuitous, or to quote Sam, sometimes things have to get worse so you can figure out how to make them get better.

That hadn’t helped much when you’d been transfixed on a street corner looking at the glint of sunlight on a tenth story window catty-corner to you, and it doesn’t help much in the following days, but when you’re at your worst, when you can’t so much as remember your fucking name, sometimes his voice rattles around the swiss cheese of your skull and reminds you that you gotta be bad to have a better to become.

You miss Steve’s first birthday since your freedom without even noticing its passing-- you notice the day, sure, hard not to with the fireworks going off in your ears and the screaming trying to build in your throat until you find yourself pressed in a corner with your metal hand against your flesh lips, a blood trail down your chin and the noises stopped, but you don’t remember what that _means,_ and you’re used to the niggling sense that you’re missing something, it is your closest companion, and you don’t think anything more of it than that.

You miss Steve’s second birthday since your freedom because he’s away or you’re away but even if you weren’t away or he wasn’t away neither of you are ready to do more than attempt to fit your rough edges into the same room; he doesn’t try to talk to you and you try not to hurt him when he startles you and the both of you are sick with misery over it and over you. It’s not that you’ve not tried to disarm yourself; you have, you really and truly have, but the thing is that you were a weapon for double, triple the part of your life that you were a guardian. The thing is you can give up your knives and your guns and your grenades and your low quality EMPs and every other trick your masters had sewn flaps into your combat gear for but you cannot remove your arm, and you cannot remove your teeth, and you cannot remove your weight or your brain and unless you could do all of those things you could never truly be unarmed.

That’s not the point though, the point is that you miss Steve’s second birthday since your freedom because he’s away or you’re away and you spend it staring at a wall or you spend it staring at someone who wants answers that you do not have or he spends it staring at you while you stare at a wall or he spends it breaking necks and saving lives as though the two could be mutually inclusive, as though for him and him alone the two are mutually exclusive, and at this point you are far too bitter and far too lost to drag yourself out of your thick miasma. his second birthday since your freedom passes with just as much pomp and circumstance (and personally inflicted bloodshed in the pursuit of reality, oops, your bad) as the first had.

So, there’s another year that rolls around. You mostly spend it trying to learn to pick up kitchen knives and talking to your therapist, who you’re certain regrets ever taking confidentiality vows, because you know that no amount of banana bread hand delivered by Captain America really makes up for some of the things she’s had to listen to. Even if the banana bread has chocolate chips in it and you personally promise that you had no hand in making it.

You go to the mall a couple times over the year, have conversations just stilted enough that even you can pick up on their awkwardness that slowly start to fade into more seamless things, though you still have to be careful with Natasha to make certain that you stay in English if you’re anywhere anyone else may appear, because when you’re speaking Russian your brain is even less reliable than when you’re speaking English, hard lined for combat, not just obedience. You don’t slip up. It’s still hard. You have it on good confidence that it’s going to be hard for at least the next decade, if not the rest of your life, though, and you suppose you’ve made your peace with it. Or, as close to peace as you know how to make with things, which is to say that you simply do not linger on it.

Time is rough. You have a habit of hearing half a thought, stopping to chase it, and coming back to yourself hours later with nothing to account for your time but the grumbling of a system finally re-accustomed to daily meals and angry when they’re lacking. You do this in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the living room- with the tap running in the bathroom and a toothbrush clenched in your metal fist, or later on with the tap running in the bathroom and the scattered remains of a snapped toothbrush around your booted feet. But you have the months- you found them, you named them: January, February, March- pinned up carefully one after the other on the ceiling of the room which is to be yours where you can see them even in your sleep, where they are carefully out of reach.

(You know that nothing is truly out of reach in the same way you know that Steve Rogers will sink if allowed to encounter a suitably large body of water, will not even bother trying to swim. Both these thoughts claw through your stomach and up your throat and out your mouth into the cool ceramic of a toilet bowl on more than one occasion. That doesn’t mean you have to admit to having them.)

What this is getting around to saying, is that by the time your third June rolls around you can trace the letters of the month that follow on the bedroom ceiling: the big J, the hasty u that loops up into the l and meets the finalizing y that put together mean it’s Steve’s birthday soon. The realization comes to you one night when you’ve been staring at the stucco-blank ceiling in lieu of counting sheep (sheep, why sheep), and you sit bolt upright from the force of the perfect clarity that the thought brings with it.

Steve’s birthday means presents. Steve’s birthday means shitty-ass cake that doesn’t have enough sugar to taste good and sticks to the roof of your mouth, Steve’s birthday means trying to get him up onto the roof to--

\--to something. The clarity vanishes as quickly as it’s come, leaves you back in your body with its ever present aches and pains and the dense fog that does its level best to obscure all thought, but you cling to that as you slowly lie back down. You cling to the thought that it will be Steve’s birthday soon, it will be his birthday. You decide it is your job to make certain he enjoys it, you hold onto it with everything you have left to your name through the dark deep blue of the night all the way to the clearer bright that means it’s okay to leave the room in which they have placed you, the clearer bright that means that Steve will be up, maybe Sam, that means there is coffee and small talk and a million different societal cues that you manage better and better with each passing allied month.

You will need to get Sam alone. You cannot do this with Steve’s awareness- you know why you cannot in a foggy sort of way, enough so you can manage to snag the sleeve of the thick sweater Sam wears despite the outdoors heat and tilt your head out of the room, ignore the mild hurt that you know is flashing in Steve’s eyes at the thought that you might wish to share something with Sam that you would not with him, ignore the way you know it will fade into guilt because he thinks you have been forced to be without secrets for far too long, your Steve does, would take on the entire goddamn world for your right to hoard what you had for breakfast for yourself if he thought for even a second that was what you wanted. The duplicity hurts, deep in your chest. There is not much of you that doesn’t hurt, though, and you ignore it easily. Sam follows you without hesitation. (Once he had not been inclined to linger anywhere you were, and you did not blame him for it. Not after you had ripped his wing from his back and sent him hurtling through the sky towards certain death. You know the fear that comes with that sort of fall. You could never blame him for it. Thankfully, he is a better man than you are and in the intervening years the two of you have formed an almost easy alliance)

The hallway is not precisely dark, there are lights at either end; there is no light in the hallway itself, though, and for a split second you can see him evaluating the threat. You are not naive enough to think that he does not consider you a threat. You would not trust him to look after Steve if he didn’t. Nonetheless, your intentions and your actions are aligned in this; you do not lash out without knowing precisely why as you have in the past, do not react to his careful evaluation with precluding violence. Instead, you simply lower your voice to a decibel Steve will not be able to register and ask “Can we,” pause to marshal your words, fight past the lump that still grows in your throat every time you make a request as though you may still in fact be subjected to the lightning chair for daring to have a thought of your own “visit a shopping center?” You can almost hear him ask if you want him to invite Steve before the last word leaves your mouth, so hastily you add “On our own.” to cut it off, because you’re no good at saying no to even the most benign suggestions just yet, and if Steve came it would be game over before you have even begun.

He looks at you for a hair longer than you’re comfortable with, but you fight to keep his gaze. It doesn’t come natural to you any more, but after another minute he’s shrugging, offers you a grin. “Sure, man,” he verifies. “I gotta go into work today, but when I get home we’ll go.”

You can tell that he wants to ask why, wants more information, but one of your favourite things about Sam Wilson is his willingness to recognize when to respect your desire for silence. You’re not comfortable thinking your own thoughts yet, much less sharing them with others, and he will respect that in every situation that he does not deign too important to allow for secrets. You can understand that. You can respect that. The two of you return to the bright-lit kitchen, and you shoot your best approximation of a rueful smile Steve’s way, force yourself to lean slightly towards him across the kitchen table even if you cannot make yourself toss out an easy quip the way once you might have done. Steve smiles back at you, and even if it’s a tight smile, it’s better than it has been, and you feel a little bit of the ache in your chest evaporate. Steve Rogers’ trust in you matters, for reasons you do not examine too closely.

Sam laces up his shoes and goes off to work and Steve does much the same; he’s not headed to work, but rather to any number of haunts he has around the city. Originally, he’d stayed home with you as though if he took his eyes off you you might well vanish, and you suppose after the chase you had led him on he had every right to his insecurity, but it had driven the both of you damn near insane to be cooped up together. He’d gotten a phone call one day, and after that he’d taken to going out. Frequently, he doesn’t return until the evening, long after Sam gets home from work. You think he’s trying to give you space to talk to another human being if you so choose. It’s stupid, and touching, and you feel just the slightest bit warm on the inside when you think about it for too long.

You don’t mind being left alone. You kind of enjoy the solitude: you hadn’t been allowed much of it when you were awake, and if you retain any memories of the years you slept away in your cryo tank, they are solely impressions, impressions of a deep cold and a lingering sense of being watched. Privacy was a human right, and you were not human.

The day passes in a haze of shadow-dappled light. At some point you think you eat, because you find yourself washing a plate, but you are not entirely sure. Later, you find yourself sitting on the couch with the television buzzing static at you: you must have been watching a movie. You’re just considering whether it’s worth turning off the set when you pick out the sound of a key in the lock. It’s not Steve, you know that without needing the door to open- Steve makes his footsteps loud for you on purpose, has ever since you threw him out a window because he startled you and you wouldn’t speak to anyone for four days. It’s good that he’s home first- you’re off the couch and grabbing a sweater to throw over your thin t-shirt before he’s even got the door open.

Sam gets the door open and shoots you your second smile of the day, fatigue wearing down the lines of his shoulders. “Hey, I’m gonna hit the shower, but we can go when I’m done, okay?” He asks, toeing out of his shoes and nudging them towards their place at the door. You nod, even though you know he is not waiting for an answer, decide that you can use the time to leave Steve a note. Padding towards his room, you dig up a piece of scrap paper, a pencil that is undoubtedly meant for many things but certainly not for simply writing a note and sit down at the kitchen table to scratch it out.

‘Steve,

Gone shopping with Sam. Don’t worry.’

The pencil hesitates a line down as you consider whether or not you want to sign it. There’s really only one person who’d be leaving him a note and mentioning Sam. He can figure it out, probably. You tell yourself it's the lack of necessity that leads you to rest the pencil down next to the paper, fight to keep your lips from twitching down into a frown because even three years into your freedom you still do not know how to sign a single goddamn note. You can hear the water from Sam’s shower hitting the shower wall over the ringing in your ears, and your eyes close, almost on their own. All of the sudden you’re exhausted, but you’ve come to expect this sort of thing. It’s not exactly easy, trying to live with a century to your name. Not even when you can’t remember most of it. You set the pencil gently down without opening your eyes; you don’t think it would be smart to try and push yourself any further than you already have today. You don’t think it would be safe.

Eventually, the shower shuts off, and you force yourself to open your eyes. You stand, pull a glove out of your pocket and on over your left hand, and grab your wallet.

You hadn’t had a wallet at first, but you'd decided a couple months ago that you would need one if you were ever going to do more than pretend that the world ended at the edges of Steve’s apartment. You’re still not entirely confident in letting the others see it, and it carries nothing more than paper money, but you manage to slip it into the pocket of your pants before Sam can emerge from the bathroom anyway, so it’s okay. You know they would not punish you for acquiring possessions of your own. You’re still twitchy about letting them see anything you want to keep.

Leaving the apartment is hard. Even Sam at your side and the knowledge that not once have you lashed out and done harm to a civilian since you came back into control of yourself can only do so much to bolster you: it’s bright, even at six thirty, and there is such an abundance of traffic that you cannot help but twitch this way or that, searching an escape from the noise, the movement. You try to keep the twitching to a dull shudder; you are (of course) successful. That doesn’t keep Sam from glancing at you out of the corner of his eye, but the two of you walk in companionable silence. A year ago, Sam might have asked you which center you wanted to visit. By now he knows that unless you state a preference to ask your opinion is to court disaster, so you simply follow his lead, stay a half-step behind him.

Shopping is about as easy as leaving the apartment, only doubled. Which is to say it’s fucking awful. But you manage to tell Sam what your goal is, manage not to let yourself flush crimson at the broad grin he rewards you with: it’s clear you’ve delighted him. He badgers you good-naturedly to tell him when _exactly_ Steve’s birthday is, mostly to distract you from the crowds, but a little bit because he’s really and truly curious. He actually laughs when you tell him, head thrown back and eyes pressed closed, and your lips curve into a smile entirely on their own, which startles and delights both you and he. You find what you want almost entirely without hiccup and the lady at the counter sends you to the gift-wrapping center. The man there makes Steve’s present vanish underneath the cool blue wrapping paper you choose and you stick a bright white bow on it, scrawl Steve’s name with a red sharpie just to piss him off with the color combination, and Steve is even home when you and Sam finally stumble back into the apartment, and he smiles when he sees the two of you, so yeah, you’re prepared to chalk this one up as a win.

Later, after he’s opened his present and called you an asshole for it (“I just thought since so much has changed you might get lost,” you protest, only half-hearted in your innocence. “Bull _shit_.” Steve answers you, and on another day that might have been enough to silence you, but you’ve been working yourself into a headspace where you can almost manage normal all day, so all you do is elbow him in the ribs as gently as you can manage) and after Sam’s insisted Steve put his new map of the city by the front door in case he needs it; after Sam’s brought out the impromptu cake that you’d stopped by a bakery for (sorely testing your ability to handle crowds and small spaces to make sure that Steve will have a cake on his birthday), after the three of you have devoured every last crumb and retired to the living room to lie in heaps and contemplate the ceiling, Steve will look over at you in silence, and you will look back at him, and Sam will watch the both of you until you come far enough out of your little world to remember that there is a third party to the whole of you now, and none of you will say anything, but none of you will need to.

There is a peaceful sort of silence to knowing that you are in a maybe-home with the people who might make it, and later tonight you will experience it for the first time since you'd met Steve and felt some ridiculous fondness take root in your chest, propel you forward to introduce yourself. It's a little bit terrifying, actually, but your stomach is full of good food and you're _tired_ , and you decide maybe just for tonight you can _not care_ if you're scared.

But that is later, and this is now. For now, you will simply smile at Steve from where you cling fiercely to both the bag that holds his present and the energy you have dug up for today especially, and follow once more on the heels of Sam across the doorway into your home.

 


	6. and in the hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You do not think you have ever been more religious than 'Ave Maria, gratia plena' whispered into muggy summer air while you sat at your best friend's side as he fought not to fold beneath the weight of his own shitty lungs, but this might well be your very first religious experience."
> 
> Or: Bucky has Issues With Physical Contact, capitals full well meant along with all the weight that implies, and some tears are shed. No content warnings apply.

The first time you let him touch you the pain in your chest is so intense that the frosty glass of your cryochamber flashes behind your eyes. It's startling enough that you choke in the middle of your inhale, forget entirely about the exhale. (It's not the first time he's touched you, just the first time you initiate it. He can go toe to toe with the best saint you’d care to name on any given day for selfless behaviour, but you’re still his best friend, even minus your memory. Every saint has a breaking point. His just happens to be you.)

The two of you are seated on the couch, curved carefully away from each other. Or, the two of you had been seated on the couch with an awful precarious space separating you until suddenly it had been too much for you and you’d simply moved until you could allow your head to thunk forward, allow your forehead to fall to rest on Steve’s. (Had Sam been there you would have been stopped before you could get within centimetres of Steve, because you hadn’t declared your intentions. Steve thinks it's ridiculous. You think maybe it’s one of the reasons you like Sam. But this is not about Sam. This is about you; this is about Steve.)

This is about Steve, and Steve--

\--looks like you've hit him in the solar plexus. He looks like he’s locked every single muscle in his body and never plans on unlocking them; like he’d stay at the end of you until the world crumbled, if you let him.

That’s enough that you can push past the ice your treacherous brain tries to report creeping along your limbs, and you press your forehead hard into his, just enough to sway him back a bit, lift your flesh and blood hand until it’s hovering in the air in front of him, unnaturally brave, unnaturally bold. His hand actually shakes when he raises it too, a stark contrast to the controlled rigidity of the rest of him. Slowly, so slowly you think you might die of it, he presses his fingertips to yours: middle, ring, index. Pinkie; thumb.

You are sitting in Steve’s living room on Steve’s couch and you are curled around Steve and connected to him via these six careful points; five fingers and a forehead that prove you are more than a killing machine; six careful points that swear you can touch without harming. Had you known why the need to touch him had been so strong, you would have denied it. You don't deserve this comfort, you know that- but you did touch him; you touched him and you are touching him and he is touching you back and there is no blood and there is no pain, and if you knew how you think you would break apart under the relief of it. You don't know how; you weren't built to break.

Instead, you press the flat of your palm to his, press your forehead harder against him and it’s not that you’re not in pain, HYDRA had left you plenty of reminders of its existence even as they’d erased everything else, and you will feel them regardless of the humidity index every day for the rest of your life, but next to the fact that Steve is warm and solid and not hurt the fact that you are in pain, that there is pain from wounds ill-tended and a body strained beyond its limits is inconsequential. There is a weight in your chest that you cannot name, though, and this feels momentous but you cannot figure out why, cannot force it past the moth-eaten arches of the memories you were once denied and have not yet remastered.

For once, Steve gets what you need without having to ask you. No matter how solid you push against his hand, it doesn’t budge. His eyes are closed and his breathing is shallow but he may as well be made of iron, and you do not think you have ever been more religious than ' _Ave Maria, gratia plena_ 's whispered into thin air while you sat at your best friend's side, _ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc_  thundering through your mind as he fought to breathe beneath the weight of his own shitty lungs, _et in hora mortis nostrae_  left at the door to his room when you had to go- but you think this might well be a religious experience, or if it's not than the people who sit in pews and pray are missing out, and now Steve has silent tears shuddering down his cheeks and you cannot help but close your eyes as his fingers slip off yours, slip down the lengths of your fingers to grasp at the back of your hand instead.

He tugs you forwards, tilts his head back and away from you and you fall towards the rest of him in the way you guess you always must have. Your head hits his chest, the hand you’re not holding onto like it’s your only promise of salvation wraps around your shoulder and over your back and you think briefly to protest, to spare him the degradation of having to touch the metal of your arm that your t-shirt doesn't quite cover; only you know how that conversation would go and you are weak, weaker than you have any right to be. You simply bury your face in his sweater and listen to his heart beat while his tears drip onto your head.

(A few hours from now, Sam will be home, and you think he’ll want an explanation, maybe; you know you’ll have to tell him that what’s between you and Steve is not romantic, is not what he thinks. You know that eventually you will have to tell him that you are not what he thinks, but you think he’ll understand eventually, and Steve is breathing and you can feel it and maybe he isn’t the only one who’s crying, you're not entirely sure.

Maybe you need this. Maybe one day you can even deserve it.)


	7. smiles like the sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes some time for anyone to hit on a method of socialization that doesn’t leave you a shattered wreck in a corner. Taking you outside is straight out of the question. Leaving you to rot in the room they’d assigned you, also out of the question. For a long time, the closest thing any of you can come to a solution to your incredible inability to relax in the presence of anyone is a cleared section of the living room floor on which you can curl up, press your back to the wall and watch the traffic pass by.
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes learns a little of how to be comfortable in his own skin.
> 
> (Alternately: irredeemable non-shippy but able to be read that way fluff because it's been so long since I updated). No content warnings apply.

It takes some time for anyone to figure out a method of socialization that doesn’t leave you a shattered wreck in a corner. Taking you outside is straight out of the question. Leaving you to rot in the room they’d assigned you is also entirely out of the question. For a long time, the closest thing any of you can come to a solution to your incredible inability to relax in the presence of anyone is a cleared section of the living room floor on which you can curl up, press your back to the wall, and watch the traffic pass by.

At first, you’re left pretty well alone--eventually, though, Steve and Sam and Natasha begin to infringe upon your space. They drop down next to you as though it’s second nature to seek out your company, each and every one. And each brings something with which to snag your eternally-distractible attention: Steve will bring whatever he’s updating himself with, to nudge you towards the future, towards the past. Sam will bring his paperwork, talk to you about the inanities of civilian working life and pretend he doesn’t see your confusion on a thousand finer points, or maybe elaborate on them for you a little. Nat brings tea in two mismatching mugs and doesn’t expect conversation from you; the two of you simply sit and sip. For a few minutes, you can pretend to have a peer. You think maybe it might not even be pretend--you’re not certain about it, not good with cues. You’re certain that you like her company, though: Steve is a mess of tangled expectations, Sam is a pro at fucked up and can’t disengage from trying to lend a hand, but Natasha is a different story altogether. Natasha is a supremely dangerous individual who knows a little of what to expect from you, someone who could probably take you in an even fight--long story short, you’re fairly certain you trust her.

Or, you think what you feel for her is called trust. You don’t exactly have anyone you can ask.

So--her company is okay. The two of you sit not quite touching on the floor, and you try to form opinions about the tastes of the tea she brings. Mostly you fail, but as there’s no one to report your failure to, you don’t have to feel bad about it. You don’t have to admit to feeling bad about it, at least.

Eventually, she begs off from the ground (“You might be used to it, Barnes, but I’m practically an old lady. I’ve gotta enjoy the good things while they’re around”) and moves to the very corner of the couch. Like a magnet, you follow her. You can’t quite bring yourself to trust the couch yet, the remembered truth of the danger of soft things is still too vivid in your mind--but you can lean against the edge of it and eventually--you can lean at the foot of it. She curls her legs up neatly next to her: the space at her feet is yours. From the side of the couch, you’re protected: your legs bunch up under you in a ready position, you could be on an assailant in seconds. The front is a different story altogether, but she has made space to accommodate you, and you aren’t so spoiled by your own room as to think space designed for you is something you can afford to waste. You swallow your fear, you move. In order for Natasha to be able to reach you from where she curls on her elbow, you have to lean back, expose yourself. You’re not going to pretend it isn’t nerve-wracking. Not much isn’t.

Somewhere along the line you find that your head has come to rest on her knee--somewhere along the line, you find that the two of you have lapsed into Russian. Somewhere along the line, you find that her hands are in your hair, and most importantly: somewhere along the line, you find that you don’t mind. Over the months, it becomes routine: you and Nat and your tea congregate in the living room in the quiet moments, and for a span you can just breathe.

If you ever saw the way your face softens when Nat’s got her hands in your hair, it’d shock you into silence. Steve actually has to leave the room to have a quiet cry the first time he sees it--her fingers are long and slender and scarred and deadly, and you’re never quite so calm as when the back of your skull is resting on her knee and her blunted nails are scratching at your scalp. It starts out as something secret and maybe sacred between the two of you, carefully negotiated into dual roles in which you can feel safe, and slowly evolves into something more. The evolution starts when Sam walks in on the two of you, and Nat gestures him over to tuck himself carefully next to her on the couch. He slings an arm over the back of the couch and traps her feet neatly under his thighs and she smiles at him like the sun. It continues when Steve can finally bring himself to breach the doorway, when he stumbles across the three of you; he folds to the floor at your side as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, makes sure to sit close enough that your shoulders knock together every time he twists to look Natasha or Sam in the face when he’s something to add to the conversation.

Had this not started out something small and secret, you think that you would be stifled by the press of bodies, think your stomach would revolt and claw through your heart and up your throat at the mere concept of all of the damage you could do from such close proximity- but this started with nothing but Natasha and her bluntstrong fingers. And you have painstakingly learned how to calm to the pressure on your scalp; every time your skin starts to shift the wrong way, her fingers press firm into your head, your skull presses firm to her knee, call and response. You feel just the tiniest bit safer.

Sam’s time with the two of you starts in silence, but he’s bad at not flirting with Natasha any time they’re in the same room (despite the fact that you think they’ve been doing Natasha’s equivalent of dating for the past nine months; dating with Natasha looks a lot like having your personal space invaded and her personal items left all over it, only that and nothing more), and that means they have hushed conversations over your shoulders towards the start--long silences interspersing careful words as Sam eases himself into comfort with this version of you and Natasha tries to keep you from bolting, tries to leech the tension from your shoulders and the fear from your heart with nothing but her very own self. Eventually it sort of works, and laughter is added to the mix of quiet thoughtfulness; Sam gets more adept at reading Natasha’s brand of flirtation, and something in the back of your mind itches at you that maybe you should pull him aside, remind him just what her body is (a weapon, as much as yours or perhaps even more, metal arm or no metal arm) and that there are certain lines therefore he should not cross nor expect to cross. But he’s a smart man. You think he’ll figure it out on his own; even if he doesn’t, this would not be the time to tell him.

You think it’s the laughter more than anything else that draws Steve in when he comes: even as a silent participant, the laughter of two people who genuinely enjoy each others’ presence is a balm on your soul, and your Steve has ever been drawn to things that might be good for you.

He sits next to you and you sit next to him and his skull knocks on Sam’s knees and yours rests on one of Nat’s and for a while it’s so quiet you can hear them all breathing; slow, steady. A little bit of the terror you live with subsides- maybe even for good.

 


	8. you will not fight it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Despite the impermanent nature of who and what you are, a lot of what you learned during your time as The Winter Soldier is more permanent than you might think."
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes gets brought in. Content warnings for: depersonalization, accidental self harm, oblique mentions of torture

Despite the impermanent nature of who and what you are, a lot of what you learned during your time as The Winter Soldier is more permanent than you might think. Certain rules, certain boundaries, certain truths--didn’t change, mission to mission. There was no need for their erasure; you after you after you woke up and woke up and woke up, and each time you woke with the same inalienable facts stamped across your being.

Fact one: your work is a necessary evil. Everything you do has a reason. All of it is for a cause. Every corpse, every burnt shell of a town, every woman left widow (man left widower) child left orphan (parent left bereaved)--necessary steps, each and every one. You walk in the light. Yours is the hand that shapes the century. Yours is the hand that shapes the century. You will not fight it.

Fact two: you are dangerous. When they think you can’t hear them or when they’ve forgotten that you are not in fact a machine and nothing else or when they simply have stopped caring, (as you will much later on come to suspect was often the case) they will call you erratic. They will call you a risk; unstable. Whenever you report to authority, it is important that you disarm yourself as thoroughly as possible.

What does this mean? This means every piece of weaponry that you have, in every pouch and every holster all the way across your body is to be removed: the derringer; the intratec TEC-38; the sig; the skorpion; the M4A1; the FN Mk 13, your grenades, your knives. The last-resort EMP inside your glove to be used only in your final moments--all those and more are to be removed. When reporting to ultimate authorities one handgun is to be left out where they may utilize it, should your retirement become required. You cannot do anything about the arm. You know that to try is to court more displeasure than to risk leaving it--you still remember the pain you were subjected to when you used your EMP to render yourself harmless for your ultimate authority. You will not fight it.

Fact three: what they call you is what you are. Asset, Soldier, Ghost--you will become whatever you are told. You will not fight it.

Fact four: you will never know warmth. The doctors who scurry about as though you do not take steps to neutralize your danger will convene to drone at the very edge of your hearing for a few minutes every time the shivering kicks in. Never is there a solution. (.....ntended side effect of the cryost…….y resolve on its own. There is a marked danger…….the subject. Advise patienc..) This is your existence. You will not fight it.

Fact five: when they are done with you they will kill you. If you do not perform, they will kill you. If you perform too well, they will kill you. If you perform exactly to standard, they will kill you. There is no scenario that does not end in your death. You will die a thousand screaming times in the same chair with the same rubber bit between your teeth and the same lightning coursing through your skull. This is what you deserve. You will not fight it.

These facts do not vanish simply because your scheduled death fails to appear--they are as loud in your mind as they were the day you were born (screaming bitter rubber in a bank vault) the day you let Steve Rogers find you on a frozen rooftop. You let him approach, you let him disarm himself. Every single part of your mind screams that it is wrong--you are the one whose hands should be in the air, you are the one who should allow your weapons to clatter to the tiles, but you let him approach as if you might spook at the slightest infraction, and when he finally takes one of your wrists in his too-hot grip, you go quietly.

You do not notice your hands are in fists until he is prying your softer hand apart to expose the brightwet weakness that drips to the floor. You go quietly.

He seems determined to put to the lie the facts that order your universe, but there are some he cannot avoid confirming. You take quiet relief in them. When you reach his apartment, the man with the wings stands armed and the Widow inspects her nails; you know they both are prepared to retire you should you lose control. You cannot help but be comforted. The too-hot man presses you into a chair, and so it goes. Derringer, intratec TEC-38. Sig; skorpion. M4A1, FN Mk 13. Grenades, knives. Your EMP. At your first movement, the Widow tenses, but you flare your weakness wide at her, and the drying brown of your blood settles her. You curl it back up, return to removing your weapons, metal against metal where holes in your gloves have appeared. You do not think about your weakness. You do not think about the the too-hot man’s weaknesses. When you are finished, you clear your throat. Your voice does not break; you are better than that.

“If you want me to, I can knock out the arm.”

Ste--the too-hot man looks appalled. “Bucky.” he says. “Bucky, no, why would you.” The man with the wings says something, but you cannot hear him over the ringing in your ears, so it must not be important.

“Bucky.” he says, so you have a name; what he calls you is what you are. Bucky. You do not fight it.

You didn’t think he was going to tell you to take it out. But you didn’t plan on him sounding like that. You show your weakness again, the only apology you know how to give. The back of your mind is ablaze in fear. You don’t know the facts. You don’t know the facts, you _don’t_ know the **facts.**

Your vision starts to go soft around the corners, and for a little while you go away.

You come back seated in a new chair in a new room and there is a blanket on your lap and your boots are still on your feet. The too-hot man is asleep in an armchair. His blanket matches yours. The Widow stands in the doorway and when you see her your hands tighten around the blanket; it is softer than you expect, so some of your panic must show on your face, because the Widow tilts her head and disappears, reappears with a glass of water and a chalk-white pill and an expression that doesn’t hurt deep inside your chest and you think--you think maybe one day, you’ll know the facts again.

You think, maybe you’ll have time to learn them.

You think, _please, **please** let it be so_.

 


	9. live unbruised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In truth, you have no idea how to broach the topic. Your metal hand smooths nervously over the fabric of his bedspread, you duck your head to avoid his eyes. “Sam--” you start “--he had wings. Before.” 
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes has a thing or two he wants to set straight. Part one of two, because this got way too long way too fast. Content warnings for: incidental self-harm, depersonalization, references to vomiting, panic attacks. I don't think I missed anything, but drop me a line if I did.

Whenever possible, you try to soften the blows.

You’re not supposed to, you know. It’s your job, your mission, your entire raison d’être, relearning how to be yourself. Never mind if you want to be yourself or not--there isn’t enough of you left to make that decision, or so you gather. And maybe the people who tracked you down and brought you out need you to relearn 

In the beginning, here is what you know:

  * The year is (somehow) the year of Our Lord 2014.

  * You have been pliant in HYDRA hands for over half a decade.

  * Everything you know is wrong.




Steve Rogers (Rogers, Steven Grant) was born July 4th, 1918 to Sarah and Joseph Rogers. Plagued with illness from the very beginning of his life, he never knew his father--a confirmed casualty in World War One, and his mother ended up right next to him in the ground, winter 1941. At the time, Steve was twenty three, and he’d never looked less his age than he did standing outside an empty apartment without the faintest idea where he’d left his keys.

Natasha Romanoff (Romanova, Natalia Alianovna) was born November 22nd, 1984, most likely in Stalingrad. She was recruited (for a given value of the word) into a supposedly nameless government group, trained equally in the ways of assassination and espionage. At some point, she defected to the Americans. Ballet is--was her passion. Now, she’s more inclined to murder the next person to mention it as she is to take to the stage.

Sam Wilson (Wilson, Samuel Thomas) was born July 25th, 1981 to Darlene and Paul Wilson. He joined the United States military and became a pararescueman attached to the 58th rescue squadron, where he served until the death of his best friend. He took your casual destruction of his wings with much more difficulty than he did your whole-hearted attempts at causing his death.

Only one of those things do you have a legitimate right to know: Sam Wilson is awake at far too many abnormal hours not to be haunted, and the focused way he watches the birds at his birdfeeders from the kitchen counter as the morning sun creaks slowly up over the horizon is telling, even if it takes Steve Roger’s quiet understanding to make you realize your own.

You spend most of your own time functionally nonfunctional.

You don’t know how to be nonfunctional.

That’s not the point.

As early as you can (dis)remember, you have been functional. Times do not (does not?) (will not?) (could not?) lend (itself?) themselves to those who do not lend themselves back and you are (you were) (you will ever remain) a child of war. Children of war do not get to be nonfunctional. Children of war are men and women and in betweens who stand up and stand up and stand up--in your hands a danger that is known and true and righteous; in your hands a knife, in your hands a gun, in your heart and your mind and your mouth a bomb, and Steve Rogers a rare exception.

That’s not the point.

You don’t know what the point is. You think maybe the point is that under your skin lives a concept for which you haven’t got a name, you think maybe the point is that you _are_ a body but you do not _have_ a body, you think that the point is--you think that you _are_ the point. You _know_ that you are the point, what little patchwork you there is. You do not have a body. You are a body.

You sit outside in the rain until you are certain it will not rust.

You sit outside in the rain until you are colder than you have ever been before; colder than freezing (colder than staying). You sit outside in the rain until you are certain you are staying.

You sit outside in the rain until Steven Grant Rogers comes to take you back inside, all shock and concern at the unforgivable shaking that started up with the first drops of rain on your face and has only intensified since. You were certain you would not rust. You think you may have been wrong: your voice has rusted solid in your throat; you cannot keep the panic from rusting solid in your eyes. It rises nonfunctional to nonfunctional to staring at Steven Grant Rogers like you’ll get anything but suffering for it.

It turns out that you get anything but suffering for it: you get strong arms, a solid warmth. Once upon a time you had thought what Alexander Pierce showed you was the truest love there could be, but you--you were wrong, you were wrong, you were _so wrong_ , and you find that the shaking isn’t from the cold, it is from you, from the gut of you; the core of you; the _you-est_ you.

That, too, is not the point.

You have a hard time with names unless you recite them to yourself so many times that they become the pounding backdrop to your every moment--Natalia Alianovna Romanova, Steven Grant Rogers, Samuel Thomas Wilson, Natalia Alianovna Romanova--and so it goes. When you are out loud, you have to focus not to echo them out in time, skitter and shy away from names because the wrong name is worse than no name at all, which is another thing you know with absolute certainty. (Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You _know_ me)

You think maybe Sam Wilson has noted your difficulties. You think maybe Steve Rogers is ignoring them.

You are functionally nonfunctional.

That does not mean that they have to know just how deep it goes.

In the back of your mind the rules of engagement are drawing themselves up and no thundering symphony of names is going to drown them out; you had thirty one years of being a person. You had just shy of seventy being a weapon. Even leaving aside nature versus nurture, your programming wins, every time. (Every time, every time _every time_. The proof of it hangs from your shoulder, immutable.) In one corner stand Natalia Alianovna Romanova, Steven Grant Rogers, Samuel Thomas Wilson--they are the shape of a possible future, nebulous, uncertain. In the other, you. You or you or not you, you with no idea how to tell.

You stand next to Sam Wilson while he watches the birdfeeder, and you think--I wish I hadn’t taken that from him. You haven’t worked out right or wrong yet, have only started working out remorse as more than the thing that steals your words from your mouth when you need them most, but you’re starting to work out truths. You do not think there are many things truer than Sam Wilson belongs in the air, and you are the thing that put it to the lie. You are the thing who removed that truth. You stand next to Sam Wilson while he watches the birdfeeder, and you search high and low through your mind for some way, any way to fix it. To make it better.

You don’t know how to make things better. That was never part of your job.

The birds find their audience of two four more times before you turn to Steve Rogers for his help. You take him aside one night, make eye contact from across the room and then cut your eyes towards the door as if you had any right to try to talk to him alone. When he rises and you rise Natalia Alianovna Romanova also tries to rise, but he cuts her back down with the smallest shake of his head. You are so ridiculously grateful you could cry. You do not cry. You don’t move to follow Steve Rogers either, though. For a moment, he looks at you, and you know that he is considering the best path forward, know that he is weighing every time he has trusted you and you have been unable to leave the no man’s land in between the two camps at war with each other and therefore did him harm. For a moment, he looks at you, and for the second time in the space of several seconds, you think you could cry. Instead, when he reaches his hand almost imperceptibly out towards you you take it, and his momentum is enough to force your feet to move. It feels familiar, being tugged along by the edges of his momentum. You store it away, to consider later.

His bedroom through the living room and down the hallway is a noncommittal shade of blue. This is not the first time you’ve seen it. That doesn’t stop it from startling you, though. His is not a life that lends itself to noncommitment; you realize not for the first time that as injured as you are, you are not the only walking wounded. His bedroom is noncommittal and empty saving his bed and a hamper for his clothes; he leads you over to the bed, drops your hand, and leans on the wall, eyes trained on you. It’s obvious he wants you to sit, so you sit. After all--

\--whenever possible, you try to soften the blows. You know this will not be something he wants to hear, or at least you think you do.

In truth, you have no idea how to broach the topic. Your metal hand smooths nervously over the fabric of his bedspread, you duck your head to avoid his eyes. “Sam--” you start, biting off the last name moments before it can leave your tongue. You have to marshal your courage to continue past the haze thinking of your last mission brings up, past the fear that you will glance up to find condemnation in his eyes. You have to continue. He wouldn’t be wrong to condemn you, he has every right. So long as he helps you make it right you will bear it, somehow. You still cannot stop hoping he can’t. You still have to marshal your courage to continue. You do not look up. “--he had wings. Before.” You can hear Steve straightening, can hear the rustle of fabric on fabric. With great effort, you keep your fingers flat on the bedspread. You don’t want to tear it; some struggling part of your mind supplies that Steve has a hard time finding sheets he likes. You quash the thought--while usually you would’ve been ecstatic to remember anything, you can’t afford to get lost right now. You cannot afford to get lost right now.

Before Steve can spook, you continue “I took them. That. Wasn’t right.”

He’s been trying to keep his movements slow, predictable. When you go away, sometimes you develop a little bit of a hair trigger. (When you go away, the only thing left is the weapon. Weapons don’t care what they hurt. They’re remarkably simple.) He thinks that it causes you guilt, that you have room for more under what you already carry. You haven’t disabused him of that notion yet--loathe as you can be to face some of his hopes for you, you think if he ever gave them up what little of you you’d clawed back from the nothing would wither away to nothing, permanently. But that’s not the point, the point is that he has adopted a slow stride, a careful economy of motion that’s more likely to put you at ease than to spark a desperate attack. The point is, he abandons it entirely to cross the small space between you, falls to his knees in front of you without a second thought, and you have to fight not to flinch back at the earnestness to him.

“Buck,” he says. “Buck, he knows it wasn’t you. He knows.” You bite down on your tongue, hard, fighting desperately to keep dragging your eyes back to his when you can’t keep them on him. His voice is the rough that it gets with earnestness and it hurts, deep in your chest; you force a nod, even though you know that’s not the point. You do it for the tiny smile he rewards you with, hopeful and heartbreaking and the smallest bit sad, the highlight of your day.

Still, that can’t be all of it. That can’t be the end of the conversation. You _have_ to enlist his help. “It wasn’t me, but. They’re still gone.” You don’t believe for a second that you shouldn’t bear the burden of it, but you know that if you try to argue now, it will be worse than if you had disagreed with him in the first place. You let it lie. “He misses them.” You let it lie.

There’s sadness creasing Steve’s face, alongside a desperate determination to understand, and for a moment you consider simply leaving be, because you can’t think of anything worth the awful pain in your chest that it causes, sharp and dull and impossible to ignore, all at once. Then you remember that Sam Wilson looks like that’s what he feels, every time he sees the birds, and you suck it the fuck up. “Yeah, he does, Buck.” Steve agrees into your silence. Your silence stretches, a little further. The clock in the living room is ticking, Steve is breathing, Natasha Romanoff and Sam Wilson are having a conversation in the kitchen and each and every one of those things is not what you need to be focusing on. Each and every one of them tries to demand your attention anyway.

You refuse.

“I want to make it better.” Even as you speak, you know that there will be no magic solution. The look Steve gives you, like he would pay any price set to give you that solution, like he’d pay any price set to give _Sam Wilson_ that solution just confirms it. You don’t notice that you’re smiling until Steve puts a hand to your face, a bitter little twist to your lips that means there’s another debt stacked up against you. You shake your head, force some of the bitterness on your face to move towards a resignation which is the closest you can come to equanimity. Steve stands helplessly and you brush past him on your way back out to the brighter-lit common area and the birdfeeders that stand accusatory watch outside the kitchen windows. So much in this brave new world is almost magic to you, you’d started to consider nearly anything possible, for those who occupy it. You’d forgotten that its things did not belong to you.  

The conversation doesn’t dim when you sit back down; Steve follows you back out, and any lingering unease the others might feel when confronted with your presence must be muffled by his--lest you forget for a moment that you are here at his sufferance. You don't mind, though. The sufferance of men like Steve is much easier to accept than that of men like Zola; Lukin; _Pierce._ (You still feel a stab of pain in your chest when you think that name; one that feels a lot like failure, or maybe devotion) Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanoff have started to thaw to your presence, you think. That doesn’t mean it won’t be a while before they are at their ease. You have done your level best to kill them, after all. You are defective, after all. You still cannot help yourself the majority of the time, after all. The after alls stack up, live threats buried in the no mans land you try to navigate. Steve stands behind your chair, and whether or not it is a conscious choice and for all that it digs at the parts of your mind eternally terrified, it is comforting.

You cannot be in your own corner right now but he camps out there anyway, ready and waiting for when you can finally make it. His presence at your shoulder is comforting. Sam Wilson brings a frying pan over to the table, slides a pancake onto the plate that has been set down in front of you. You tilt your head back, to where you can see Steve--he nods, encouraging and you manage a small sort of grimace of thanks. Sam Wilson hasn’t stuck around to see it, and so you reach hesitantly for the syrup: you have what Steve calls a roaring sweet tooth, and you have been permitted time and time again to add sweetness to your food. You try very hard not to be nervous about it. You do not always succeed.

Here is what you know:

  * The year is (somehow) the year of our Lord 2015;

  * You are being kept by Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson;

  * You have done explicit harm to all of the above.




Breakfast passes in a haze of conversation and helplessness: you cannot force your fingers to close around the knife required to cut your pancakes, eye your fork as if it is a feral animal, as if _you_ are the feral animal. Natasha Romanoff notes your inability, notes the frustration that you know must be creasing Steve’s face, and without any fanfare sets down her cutlery, rolls her pancake up with fastidious fingers and lifts it to her mouth as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

You do not know how to cope with a world wherein people who are not beholden to you are kind to you, but you are already nonfunctional--what’s a little more cognitive dissonance? It allows you to eat, at least, the stickysweet tang of syrup clinging to the top of your tongue and the roof of your mouth, your fingers tacking up as you go. Eventually, you must be finished, because you have a towel draped over your metal and a plate in your hand, plastic. You do not know whose idea the swap from ceramic to plastic was. You just know that the gouges scattered across your palm have finally started to heal now that you cannot shatter your plates, your cups, your bowls. They itch while they heal. They heal quick.

Steve is washing, Natasha Romanoff rinsing, you are drying. You don’t--you don’t think that this is a three person job but Sam Wilson is leaning against the counter a few scant steps away and the conversation has not dried up and he is not watching the hummingbirds that feed at the window, and you think oh, and you think, okay, and another part of your world slots into place.

Much later, you find Sam Wilson at the table, and sheets of paper spread wide across it. There is a pen gripped too tight in his fist and a sheet with his careful script all across it and from the doorway you follow his gaze to the kitchen window. To the birdfeeder.

You turn on your heel, miss the look he gives you directly after. It is sad and a little considering. You do not know this. You did not see it. You go to Natasha: she is not always here, but when she is and when she interacts with Sam Wilson, they both seem a little lighter. You do not know why. You do not need to know why. You just need to know.

You can’t help hesitating outside the door to the room that is hers. (The room is hers even when she is not in it, because once she has claimed a place that place is fundamentally altered in ways you cannot describe, would not try to) You cannot help hesitating, but you can help the urge to turn, to leave her be and retreat to a comfortable numbness--you quash it. You knock on her door.

You know that she is comfortable here because you can hear the rustle of fabric as she stands, can track her footfalls on her way to the door. When she opens it, she is met with your most well-meant and carefully prepared smile. It’s tremulous and perhaps a little shaky, but it mustn’t be awful for she does not at once shut the door, nor does her guard come crashing up around her ears. The concept that you might just look bad enough for her to be at ease does not cross your mind. You do not much think on how you look. “What’s up,” she asks, after a moment of silence, and you tilt your head back the way you’d come. With great effort, you fix Sam Wilson’s first name as a singularity in your head, lick your lips, and say “Sam--” now she does sharpen, straightening up a couple inches and at once you soften, fold down your shoulders in on yourself and make your corners lesser, more conciliatory. “--he looks sad.” You force it all out in a rush, before she can assume anything worse. The sharpness fades into inscrutability, and you think you’d almost prefer the former. “He looked happier, before.” You do not specify when--you couldn’t if you tried. You just know that he was happy, and now he is not.

The words taste strange on your tongue, like concepts half-remembered and half-forgot. Like concepts you have no right to. You use them anyway. “Can you--” you ask, cut off, flush helpless crimson at your own inability to utter even a single complete sentence. She looks at you for a moment longer, then sighs. “If I’m gonna play distraction, you’re coming with me.” Her tone is impatient, but you think you detect a subtle note of pride, know for a fact that you see warmth in her eyes. Warmth is easily identifiable--it is the opposite of cold, and your relationship with cold is intrinsically, intimately familiar. You swallow past a sudden burning lump in your throat, nod. You do not break for the nearest exit as the back of your head urges. Abruptly, a warm hand is securing your wrist--you have to fight not to break the hold before you’ve even had a chance to glance down to where Natasha has dug in a no-nonsense grip, lightly unshakeable. Turns out, you don’t glance down, because there is something in her eyes, something that you do not understand and that paralyses you in place until she looks away and drags past you and back towards the kitchen. She shoves you gently towards a corner where you can lean, drags out one of the chairs and drops herself into it, a curving grin on her face.

“Did the kitchen get declared a no-fun zone?” She asks when Sam looks up from his work, reaching over to nudge his shoulder. You shift uncomfortably, deeply out of your element. After a moment, though, Sam Wilson must decide that he is ready to rise to the occasion, because he fires back a light rejoinder, and some of the tension in the room saps out. Much, much later, when he and Natasha have relocated to the living room, when you have crossed to stare out the window to watch the birds, when those have lost your attention and the kitchen has fallen into shadow, you pad over to the table, reach out with a single finger to tilt one of the papers towards you. You feel what you think is a distinct sadness, when you see a diagram that matches the wings you so easily destroyed.

For a while, this new method works. There isn’t always someone home when you spot Sam Wilson looking much the way you spend most of your time feeling (when you feel at all) but whenever there is, you bring them out, they draw him out. Natasha doesn’t stop making you come with her, and you trail after Steve as much because of that as because you want to make certain your solution is working. Your presence--doesn’t do the harm you’d first feared it would. You cannot quite contribute, but you do not take away, either. If he glances at you the first few times you settle into a corner, well, over time that stops, and you can watch him begin to patch over his scars. You can watch him begin to work what you think must be family into the gaping space where once there were wings.

Somewhere around the same time as this, Steve picks up a pencil, a notebook, and starts to create sketches. You, Natasha. Sam Wilson. More people and things you do not know: a man-shaped beast clad only in shorts, a man in armor that you do not think belongs to this time and this place, with hair as long if not longer than yours. Some of the things he sketches spark your memory in a vague sort of way. A patch of daffodils surrounded by cracked and crumbling concrete, a cat crossing the mouth of an alley. A stove your fingers itch to look at, as though you should be cooking. Sitting and watching him draw becomes your favourite thing to do; when he is focused on the lines, his face is open in a way that you cannot quite help but feel pride at, even though it has nothing to do with you.

One day, some time in January, you think, Steve offers you a pencil of your own, a notebook to go with it. “You’re always watching me draw, I thought you might like to give it a try.” he explains, when you stare blankly at him. “You didn’t before, but.” He shrugs, smile self-deprecating. Once more, there is a lump in your throat. Your hands, when you reach out to take them, are shaking. Or, your proper hand is. Your other wasn’t built to shake. This isn’t particularly abnormal--you’re always shaking, to some extent. You think it’s because you’re not used to forcing this much cognition. You think it’s because you’re not used to this much interaction. You think it’s because you’re just plain terrified all of the time. You think it’s still better than what you had before. The Soldier never shook, but the Soldier wasn’t alive, either. You think maybe you’re well on your way to being alive, when you’re not sicking up, or semi-catatonic, or--you think maybe. It has to be enough.

You’re not exactly good at drawing to start.

Or, more accurately, you’re just plain not good at drawing.

The shaking thing messes you up, all the time. You will sit with your pad turned towards the light and the pencil gripped carefully in your flesh hand (always carefully, you break enough things without adding to the list one of the first things you’ve been given in seventy years) and one day you bite down hard on your tongue with the focus required to keep your hand from shaking--you bite down hard enough that Steve exclaims in shock when he glances over at you, and you realize the warm sensation on your chin is the slow drip of blood. You don’t know how to apologize. You do not know how to do anything but stare at him staring at you until he breaks away to run a frustrated hand through his hair, fist it in the back and tug. The motion reminds you of your own hair, and you tuck it carefully behind your ears, out of your face. It doesn’t bother you when it’s in your face, but you know that it worries Steve. You gather that the man you used to be had been quite careful about his appearance. Whenever possible, you try to soften the blows.

You return to your drawing after, keeping your tongue carefully away from your teeth. It only requires a minute adjustment to ensure that you won’t drip onto your pad, and soon enough you’re re-embroiled in trying to get the details just right, without fail. You have been drawing for a little over a month according to the date you’d scrawled on the first page and the date showing on the calendar when it occurs to you that maybe the others don’t have to be home to help Sam.

Your notepad is full of clumsy scribbles: the shape of the star on Steve’s chest, the shape of the star on your arm. The birdfeeder, the kitchen table, Natasha curled neatly into the couch. You’re not entirely sure that the scribbles are decipherable to anyone who isn’t you, or who doesn’t know already, but you think maybe if you labelled them. Maybe if you colour coded. Hesitantly, you pluck up the courage to ask Steve if you can borrow a few of his coloured pencils, a red, a blue, a black--a brown. You don’t ask him for a piece of unlined paper: you’re hardly comfortable bringing up even a single want, even when it is not for you. Two is all but impossible. Instead, you wait until the house is empty (a long wait: they’re still nervous about leaving you alone, but at last Steve goes out to visit a woman he calls Peggy; Sam is grocery shopping; Natasha gets a call from someone she calls Clint. She shoots you a considering look, orders “Stay,” like there might be anywhere else you could go) and then filch a piece of loose paper from Steve’s art supplies.

You do not think he’d mind if he found out, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t try to avoid letting it happen. You lock yourself in the bathroom attached to the room that has been designated yours, press your back into the doorway and brace the sheet of paper on your notepad, line the careful pencil crayons in careful order on the floor next to you, and begin to draw. You nearly ruin it more times than you can count before you take a moment to press the back of your skull into the door, whisper “You’re safe.” in between harsh breaths, will yourself to calm.

Over the course of the next few hours, Steve and Sam both return. The simple process of elimination tells them where you are, and they’ve certainly stood helpless in front of a locked door while you fought demons time aplenty--if your supposed right to privacy held them back then, you’re certain it will be enough here and now. You have to speak to them when they come knocking, but they leave you be when you ask for it and after a few anxious moments when you are half afraid you will take the pencils and become once more a threat, you can return to your work. Whenever possible, you try to soften the blows. Sometimes, it just isn’t possible.

It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s far from perfect.

You decide to scrap it, and start again.

You can’t do that just yet, of course. Steve and Sam’s concern is mounting, you can feel it with every passing second, and you have mere moments between the time you slide open the bathroom door that creaks no matter how you try to handle it and when they appear in the doorway to slip the failed attempt under your mattress. You manage to be sitting when they appear. You don’t think it’s obvious that you are hiding something. You think the concern in their eyes is more over your unexplained behaviour than the need to search what is for now so graciously dubbed your space for whatever secret you are keeping. You hope, at least. Steve’s sufferance may be much easier to endure than that of men like Zola or Lukin or Pierce, but you do not for a moment forget that it is sufferance indeed, even while Natasha and Sam slowly form attachment to you. You do not have privacy because it is your right, you have it because Steve thinks it is your right. It is in your best interest to keep him thinking it.

You do not know why the thought of having to manage Steve Rogers sits like despair in your stomach. You can account for the twist of deception, that’s old programming. The despair, well. You wish you had thought to turn on the shower. You wish you had thought of a way to pretend. Instead, you just dig back up your notebook and your plain pencil, and file out the door past the concerned eyes of Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers. You sit back down in the living room, back firmly to the wall and feet flat on the ground--your legs make the ideal drawing desk, that way, and you pass the time scribbling whatever comes to mind--Steve’s shield, Sam’s wings. Your mask.

Before you can notice the strength of your grip, the pencil that you have so carefully kept whole is snapping, the sound echoing like a retort through your suddenly panic-empty mind.

You only notice that Steve has joined you on the ground when he reaches over to carefully pry the pencil pieces out of your hand. He slips his own into your grip, and you pretend not to see the concern on his face when your eyes prick up with tears. They stop on their own soon enough and you can trust yourself to blink again, so you go for another smile, keep yourself rooted in the here and the now with the thundering of names your constant and unhesitating companion, even in your sleep.

You will try again.

You will make this right.

Whenever possible, you try to soften the blows.

 


	10. (we are friends)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Over half your notepad ends up crammed into a single battered envelope. You do not forget what it is. You do not forget why."
> 
> Or: Bucky Barnes continues attempting to make restitution, has an interesting conversation, and maybe finds a little bit more peace in his life. Content warnings for: questioning reality, panic attacks. I think that's it though! This chapter wraps up last chapter. There is a little bit of Russian, hover over it for a translation.

The day dawns bright and early while you are busy stealing a discarded envelope out of the trash and relocating your failed attempt at a drawing for Sam into it. You covertly tuck it into the backpack you’d brought with you when you first arrived (the one you leave on the chair Sam provided when he noted the untouched state of your bed). None of them can stand to look at it, so--it’s where your secret will be safest. You don’t think twice about scribbling ‘ _Sam_ ’ across it, in case you ever forget. You don’t think twice about many of the things you do in case you forget. (Six safe houses back there is a cat named Cat who you fear might still be waiting for you to come back. You can’t come back. But at least it will never have its name taken away from it, even if you do forget.) Then, you wait in your space until you hear the rustling that means the others are about, and leave your space to take the day’s challenges head 

The next thing you think to draw Sam is a picture of Cat. You took something of his--it only makes sense to give him something of yours. There is not much that is yours, and so Cat will have to do. You do not manage to get another piece of blank paper, so you settle instead for your own lined pages when your eyes snap open at three fifty one am precisely and refuse to shut again. Your hands are shaking bad enough that you don’t think even the label you jot down at the bottom of the page is legible, and they are not the only part of you wracked with shudders. There are tear-stains on the paper--you will not be able to give it to Sam. You rip it out, add it to the envelope. Try not to think, try not to sleep. Hold the pencil that was once Steve’s and is now yours in careful hands and count the seconds ‘till morning.

You spend the day dead-eyed and deader-brained after your drawing episode, exhaustion fair leaking off you. Steve takes a single look at you before he shakes his head and turns to engage with Sam instead; you are not sure you were meant to notice, you are not sure it really happened--you are not sure how you are supposed to tell. Natasha still hasn’t returned from whatever called her away--you feel a sense of something wrong, deep in your stomach. You don’t know enough to be able to name it worry. You do know enough to be able to name the flicker beside it gratitude, though. You wouldn’t be able to pretend even a simulacrum of functionality were you so called upon today, and no one who has seen how poorly you function when you cannot pretend likes it. The way Steve lets you be is something you are deeply grateful for; the shadows that creep up the walls another. The shadows mean you can return to your room. They mean you can lie on top of your bed with your boots unlaced on the floor and close your eyes and for a few brief hours think of nothing.

It is the start of a cycle. You will wake up every few days, utterly silent and utterly terrified. You will not be able to return to sleep. You will find your notepad, your pencil. You will draw oftentimes right up until the heavy reach of sleep drags you back into its arms. You will rip out the pages, you will put them in Sam’s envelope. The images vary: a bird, Sam as a bird, your Steve and then his Steve and on one memorable occasion what he looks like when he is in the air, wings wide and defiant behind him. You did not want to draw that one. You did not have a choice; it would not stop haunting you until it was on paper and bared for the whole world to see. Your skull holds lifetimes of memories, each more traumatic than the last, and it is the image of a single man in triumphant flight that you cannot escape.

Over half your notepad ends up crammed into a single battered envelope. You do not forget what it is. You do not forget why. You find it makes little difference to the quality of the drawings if your eyes are open or closed, especially if you use your good hand. Metal doesn’t shake. Metal is the only part of you that does not shake.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, you have better days. (Somewhere in the middle of it all, you have worse days, too, but those are expected. The better days--those are a miracle. Those bear mentioning.) You have entire days where you can take a seat without being pushed into it--only two of them, but they are still yours, and on those days your drawings may be no better but you can mark down letters with precision and clarity, look upon them later and know that they had been better days from the slant to your handwriting (Cyrillic is still easier across your fingers, but you have seen how it worries Steve--you strive to recapture the roman alphabet). In between, you wake up, and you are nonfunctional. During, you wake up, and you are nonfunctional. The difference is that one nonfunctional you can laugh with your best friend. The other still feels the urge to retreat when smiles grow too wide, still reads mirth as nothing but a sure promise of pain. You like one a lot better than the other. You wish one were more prominent than the other.

What you wish doesn’t matter for shit.

Your stomach is a gnawing pit for more than just physical hunger: acid courses through it with every confused waking moment. You do not think the man you used to be liked to be confused. You do not think the you you might now be likes it any better. You know you do not have a choice. Sometimes, when you dream you dream that you are bigger--in spirit, not body. You dream of a confidence in your ability to take anything the world throws at you and a knowledge that any fight you start you will win, of a driving someone who remains hazy even in your dreams. You dream of dancing, of being sure of your movements in something that is not combat; of knowing that your body will not let you down outside the confines of disarm, dismember, dispatch. In your dreams your body is smaller and whole and your eyes are determined, or it is smaller and bleeding and your eyes are terrified, or it is its current size and you cannot help but trip over yourself and your eyes are terrifyingly empty, smooth as the metal that makes up your arm.

Your stomach is a gnawing pit because you are hungry, all of the time, it is a gnawing pit because you are angry, it is a gnawing pit because you are sorry, so goddamned sorry and you don’t have the first clue what that means, other than to keep trying. You read the careful sheet of instructions in the laundry room when you need clean clothes. You brush your teeth. You wait for the shaking to calm.

Natasha comes back while you are standing in front of the washing machine listening to the steady thrumming sound that means it’s working--listening to your own peacemeal hissing that means you, too, are working. She smiles at you and the expression is neat, tidy. There is no extra to it that might make your stomach churn and so you smile back, move yourself to the side in case she would like to listen too. You count up in sevens as far as 1106, one hundred and fifty eight beats, before she moves, each count marked by the slow slosh of the water within the machine. She’s warm at your side even centimetres away, and you think the air in the house settles a little bit. Eventually, she asks “Ты скучал по мне?” and you find that “Стив сделал.” is already on the tip of your tongue right next to the taste of something that might be fondness. You allow it to roll off and into the air and count the smile she favours you with as a small victory.

You hadn’t noticed how far from comfortable the place had been without her. You don’t suppose any of you had, really. Steve smiles big when he sees her, and Sam has fondness painting the lines of his face by the time she’s done greeting Steve. At last, you can return to the corner you like to think of as your own, secure in the knowledge that while maybe not all is right in the world (gaping memory holes; decades of service to terrorists, either willing or coerced; and more people left for dead behind you and Natasha and Steve and Sam than you care to contemplate; to name just a few things you wish you could correct), a little bit has returned to normal.

(It’s strange that you have a normal.

Strange, but maybe good.)

Having Natasha home proves to be incredibly stabling: Sam trusts her for the same reason you do, and Steve does the same for reasons entirely his own; either way, your uphill struggle eases back up. (You won’t pretend not to be grateful for it--that pretense belongs to those for whom pride is not a luxury unimaginable. You can barely afford personhood. Pride is beyond you.) Your scribbles hardly improve in quality, but over time they slake in urgency. Weeks pass, or maybe just hours, but at some point something maybe momentous happens. Sam starts to glance your way when the tightness starts ‘round his eyes.

You’ve started taking time in your own room at Steve’s prompting, and today--today you wake up and you don’t want to be outside--the apartment feels too big, Steve and Sam and Nat when combined all three together feel too big and you can feel it in your skin and under your skin and you don’t want to, you want to feel safety which is new and something you think you should not deprive yourself of, but what this means is that today your main stimulus is the scratchy soft feeling of the carpet on your feet, and your door is cracked barely open in case you’re needed. (It’s polite to leave your door open unless you are changing or using the shower or the toilet. You have seen this, you have learned this. You are confident in this. If you repeat it often enough, maybe you’ll start to believe it.)

You hear his footsteps coming down the hallway from the very first stride--you have time to fold down the page on your current sketch; time to twist up and around to slide your notebook under your pillow, and time to straighten again before he’s knocking at your doorframe. You could call out that he may come in, but you remember back to when you stood outside Natasha’s door and instead you stand, make certain each booted footfall is audible against the thin carpet, and pull the door inward and open with your metal hand.

His hands are in his pockets, his spine is slouched, and his eyes are bright and aware when you meet them. For a moment the two of you stand together, staring at each other, and then you take a step back, invitation implicit in the motion. He takes you up on the offer, moving into your space like it’s not the first time he has sought you out of his own volition, like this is something he does every day. You’re grateful--you don’t exactly have the situational vocabulary you’d need to know how to act otherwise. You take several quick steps to the chair that hosts your backpack, clear it for him. You know that the host is supposed to provide a resting place, even if you don’t entirely understand why. It’s another thing you’ve observed. He crooks a smile at you and drags the chair over to where he can sit and still see you, should you sit on the bed.

You take it as an implicit command, and lay your backpack at the foot of the bed, sink down next to it, and twine your hands together in your lap. You are a tight bundle of anxious energy; every part of you drawn taut. Your toes curl against the carpet while you try not to let your nerves show, try to watch Sam as he twists and fusses into a comfortable position on his seat instead of fiddling with yourself. You know that your stillness reads as unnatural, but you also know that you are tasked with being the truest you that you can. That you does not appreciate unnecessary motion, so you do not fidget, you do not blink, you do not scratch. You simply sit; you simply wait. After a period of time, the silence is unceremoniously shattered.

“You know, back when I was in the army I knew a guy a lot like you.”

You doubt it. As though the thought had flashed across your face he backtracks. Hastily. “Not this you, I guess--Bucky you.” Your jaw wants to tighten, your fingers want to close into fists. Bucky you is a sensitive topic, one that even Steve has learned not to bring up. You’re tempted to leave, but--there is an inequality between the two of you, and you have suffered much worse than the mention of a long-dead man over your many years of service. “Guy named Riley,” He continues, and you drag yourself back to the present, none too gently. You do not want to be here. You owe it to him to be here.

You feel as though you need to say something. You have no idea what that something is. He speaks during your silence. “He flew with me for a long time. He was always good for a laugh on the ground, but real professional in the air. I think Steve would’ve liked him.” You nod--from what you know of Sam and Natasha, you think he’s right. “Steve--” you sound out “--was good at that. Liking people.” Sam looks surprised, which you guess you should have expected. It’s not like you usually contribute to conversation, not even when you are fifty percent of it. But there is an inequality between the two of you, one that demands you do your level best. Your level best is at least as good as some of your carefully hoarded remembrances.

After he’s done looking surprised, Sam snorts. “As long as they’re good people, you mean.” You try for a grin in the neighborhood of wry and think you end up closer to sickly, but it doesn’t seem to matter to Sam; he continues. “He got knocked outta the air one night, didn’t get to walk away from it." 

You think maybe you are supposed to be sad to hear that--you think definitely, you are supposed to be sad to hear that. You do not have room for any more sadness inside you: you are drowning in what you already contain and it has stopped feeling like choking and started feeling like nothing so your eyebrows draw together in confusion before you can stop them and Sam breathes a small sigh as though he should have known better. He runs a hand over his close-cropped hair, looks you in the eye once his hand drops back to his side. “What I’m saying is, we knew what could happen any time we put on those wings. Including when I put them on for Steve. And I got to walk away.”

You make a confirming noise. The lesson you’d learned about the perils of staying silent in one on one conversations that are important to the other party is louder in your mind than your confusion. Your sound falls into open air, stands there alone. You’re not--entirely sure that you understand what you are to do now, but you cannot help but feel that he has shared an integral part of himself with you, and it is only fair that you return the favour. The problem is you are not certain there is enough of you to dole out. You decide you do not care. You clear your throat. “Back--” you start, stop because you cannot contain yourself and you must adjust yourself, must glance towards the door to reassure yourself that there are no men wielding weapons who will decide that you have taken too much for yourself, no men who will decide that you are not entitled to your few carefully hoarded facts, and swallow before you can continue “--back a couple houses, when I was still.” You gesture helplessly towards your arm, the only way you know to say functional. “When I was still, there was. A cat.”

Sam looks like he is going to say something, or maybe like he is confused, but you raise a few fingers, carefully. You do not care if you should not, you are going to tell him this anyway. He will listen, you think. You hope. You cannot afford to fall even further into his debt. “She’d been there for a while, I think. I left her some water. She--didn’t need it, but.” Then, quieter. “Her name is Cat, so she can’t lose it.” You’re done now, so you offer him another smile, feel your shoulders lift into a shrug like they belong to someone else. It doesn’t spook you. You’re used to it. He watches you for a few moments, but you refuse to drop your eyes, refuse to slump your shoulders no matter how you wish you could. Your hands bracket your thighs, you could not stand and leave if you wanted to. You do not consider the last place you had sat so. You do not consider the implications. Finally, he smiles. “Thanks for telling me,” he says.

Now you do look away, now you are the one who raises your shoulders. Now you are the one who drops them. You do not know how to deal with thanks. You mutter “It was nothing,” and he laughs, stands. The motion (as usual) drags your attention back to him fast enough to give you whiplash, and you do not expect the warm hand on your shoulder because you are not wired to expect such things, do not expect the careful way he squeezes it, nor the lump that grows in your throat. You think there might be a lump in his, if the way his eyes have brightened is any indicator. You worry for a split second that you have done more harm than good, then consign the worry to the place you send all your helplessness. All you have left is all you have left, and if Steve is to be believed, motivations are nine tenths of what matters. Your motivation was good--selfish, but good. When the door eases shut behind him, you sink down into the softness of your bed and allow your tears to slide down your face, allow them to darken the bedspread. You are not worried about being disturbed. You know how to be quiet in suffering, and no matter how it aches in your chest, this is nothing on the lightning machine.

When you have calmed enough to be able to think, you think something important has just occurred. You wish you knew what. Eventually, you roll over and snag your drawing pad, your pencil, attempt to work it out in pictures--you know working it out in words would be all but impossible.

The drawing you end up with is nothing recognizable, not as a whole. But there are pieces you can recognize here and there--the strong arch of a jaw that means safety, the twist of a wrist that means happiness, the curving of shoulders into another that means (however tenuous) peace.

 


	11. They Called Me The Winter Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You decide maybe it is finally, finally time to be brave." Or: The Winter Soldier has been put ever so slightly to rest, and James Buchanan Barnes takes his first shaky steps back out into the world. 
> 
> Pretty sure no content warnings apply. On a slightly more personal note, thank you guys so much for sticking with me, it's been an incredible ride through this story. I am reworking it into a single cohesive whole, and it will be the first in a series concerning the healing journey of each of the four mains, but I have no ETA on that, so. For now, take this as a whole, along with my gratitude for reading. I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing.

A man by the name of Bruce Banner shows up at the door on July 27, 2017. You know this because the door to the apartment is by the kitchen and you are washing up from breakfast when someone knocks the door. You are wearing a pair of jeans—the seams are close to ripping. You are wearing a black muscle-shirt, your hand (the only one that is truly yours, the only one that is truly functional after the damage Steve did to the other one and the hard use you have put it through since.) is wrinkled, pruned around the wash cloth. There is a drying cloth over the metal of your bad arm and your instinctive reaction is to hide, to hide or to eliminate the threat. That has been your reaction to near everything since the day you were awoken and given a mission to complete, though. You're good at ignoring the need to kill. Instead, you twist around to glance through to the living room. Natasha is already rising from where she had tucked herself into the couch, movements sure and swift. She crosses the space to the door in an economy of motion and noise, glancing through the peephole without even an iota of concern on her face.

That changes, swiftly.

She is nothing if not subtle about her panic, and it is indeed momentary, but you have spent the past two years watching Sam and Steve and Natasha as though your life depends upon it. She is not so amateur as to allow her eyes to widen, but the muscles in her back tighten, the fabric of her shirt shifts as it’s pulled by the motion. Her weight settles onto her back foot, and she turns her head the slightest bit to the side with her eyes ever glued to the door and calls “Steve, we have company,” which you know for a fact is Natasha's method of requesting aid. There is a moment where her hand hovers over the handle; you find yourself fingering one of the kitchen knives next to the sink. The tension in the room is a tiny thing but when everyone present has been in at least one war zone, even the tiniest of tensions is a warning sign. Then, she opens the door and you can release the handle of the knife, the breath that had caught in your throat. You hadn't been able to, before. You hadn't noticed, either.

“Dr. Banner,” she greets evenly, and the small man standing outside the door offers her a nervous smile. “Ms. Romanoff,” he replies, and then before he can even step inside the place Steve appears at Natasha's shoulder. “Bruce!” He says, real fondness colouring his voice. “Come in, please.” You decide that if there is going to be a guest, you should likely not be found with your hands covered in water and soap suds, take a moment to dart your eyes around the kitchen. There is a hoodie slung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs—Sam's, which means it has a better chance of fitting you than any of Steve's, or Natasha's. You slip over to the chair, tug on the sweater, and jam your hands into your pockets. The movement catches the small man's eye as he steps into the room, and it's all you can do not to fade back into the shadow.

You do not manage to nod a greeting, but Steve is already suggesting the living room as a place to congregate and Dr. Banner is already toeing off his shoes and Natasha is already appearing at your side to slip an arm through your metal one and lean on you. You recognize the implicit request for further backup, glance down at her and she nods to you so you close your eyes for a moment, grab your breath. “That's Bruce Banner,” she tells you quietly, the Russian slipping off her tongue like second nature. Her accent is—as usual—flawless, and identical to your own. “He was part of the Avengers, when they had us suit up. Kind of.” She flashes you a grin and it is a tiny thing but it is also a thing that sets your shoulders closer to their normal height, calms the very edge of your breathing. You are not always sure how to provide backup, but she is no longer as panicked as she was; you can read the edges of relaxation in her shoulders. “He and Steve hit it off after the battle; they bonded over science or something. I'd been wondering when he was going to show up.” There is a twist to her words, one that tells you there are undercurrents to this conversation that you are not yet equipped to deal with. You manage an affirmative sound but it is clearly not as certain as you would like, because she gives you a measured look before she continues speaking. “What I'm saying is he's safe. Fury sent me to pick him up, and there's some bad blood there, but he likes Steve, and Steve likes you. You're fine.”

You do not entirely know what to do with this information, nor with the fact that she cares enough to reassure you about the situation. You decide it is because she wishes to contain the threat you pose, or maybe because calming you calms her, and offer her a smile. “We should go, then.” You say. Your Russian is rougher on your tongue than hers had been, but then you are perhaps not exactly fond of it, and so it makes sense. During your little talk, Sam has made his way into the living room: he stands at ease, listens intently to Dr. Banner (and the list grows: Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner—Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, Bruce Banner; into infinity in the back of your skull) and nodding occasionally. You and Natasha make your way into the living room in time to plausibly hear Sam's “It's an honour to meet you,” and in time to see Dr. Banner duck his head, smile. Sam is charming—Bruce Banner is charmed. Charmed, and completely nonthreatening.

There is something about the man that makes you think that perhaps the lack of threat on his part is quite deliberate. You do not take your eyes off him. Steve, playing the role of good host, says “You already know Natasha. This is James.” Your eyes fly to Steve, but you feel a bit of warning pressure on your arm, so you stick out your right hand, drag your eyes to Dr. Banner. This is what people do when they meet other people. You must not take the grip and use it to disable. You must not crush the larynx with your left while your target is off balance. You must not shatter its—his—the kneecaps.

You shake his hand almost on autopilot, you are so full of _you must nots_. He is curious, you can tell, but he does not ask you much. Instead, he moves to the armchair with its back to the window and sinks down. Sam and Steve take one of the couches. You and Natasha take the loveseat, when she pulls you towards it. You do not care what sort of impression this gives. The both of you need the comfort of the other's presence. At your side, she trembles slightly—it is far too faint to be visible to the eye, but she has all but tucked herself under you and you can feel her movement in any of a dozen places, easy. You lower your head towards her, and in Russian, you ask “Are you armed?” You do not think it is your place to ask; do not think it is your place to know. Further, though, you do not think this is the time for self-imposed restrictions. You think this is the time to be of whatever aid you can, no matter how small. She nods, flicks the fingers of her free hand towards where Sam and Steve have engaged Dr. Banner in conversation. “Listen.” She commands. Listen, you do. They are discussing the fall of SHIELD; a twitchy topic, and from the way Dr. Banners eyes have widened, a new one for him. You do not know where he has been for the past near three years, but it must have been an incredibly remote place for him not to have heard.

Your last mission was not incredibly subtle.

“HYDRA?” He repeats, eyes flickering between all four of you. “As in, the nazi rogue science division, the one you went down fighting last time?” He flicks his eyes to Steve with his question and there is a thread of apology in them for the bare manner in which he states the facts, but he states them anyway and Steve simply answers “That's the one.” and leaves the doctor to take it as he will. Sam does not contradict it when Banner finds his eyes, Natasha tilts her head towards you in her own answer, and you—well. You decide maybe it is finally, finally time to be brave. You disengage from Natasha, tug the sweater up over your head to reveal the black muscle-shirt you have on underneath, the shining silver of your arm, the deep bleed of the red star on your shoulder. You cannot help but curl your fingers into a fist; the ensuing noise coming from the crumpled motors in your triceps is nearly a death rattle.

“My name—” you say, stop to choke down bile in the back of your throat at what you are about to do. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes. They called me the Winter Soldier.”


End file.
